3 Pfennig - Henry XXIV

Henry XXIV ruled Reuss-Ebersdorf for over six decades, one of the longest reigns among the fragmented Reuss counties of Thuringia. The Reuss naming convention — by which every male in the dynasty was called Heinrich, numbered sequentially across all branches — meant that by the mid-eighteenth century the count numbers had grown absurdly high, a quirk that confuses collectors and genealogists alike to this day.

Billon coinage of this type circulated within an exceptionally small territory, one of dozens of petty states whose minting rights survived into the Holy Roman Empire's final decades largely by inertia.